


Commandment

by calicofold



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1681631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicofold/pseuds/calicofold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after "An Eye for an Eye", Richie reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commandment

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after Eye for an Eye. It's an unsatisfying episode in a lot of ways, with far more left unanswered than any fan would like. So what do I do? I start asking more unanswerables... If it seems a little too angst ridden, well, that's the way I see the episode - all that emotion completely bottled up. Why Commandment? Because Eye for an Eye reminded me of something else from the Old Testament. 
> 
> First written/posted 1996ish.
> 
> * * *

"Rich?"

"Later Mac." The boy still sat on the rocks, shoulders hunched, staring blindly out to sea. Duncan took a couple of paces closer, reached forward to almost touch him. His hand lifted towards Richie, then dropped again. He threw a quick look back to where Annie was waiting. Perhaps Richie guessed at Duncan's dilemma; at any rate, his head turned, and a half smile quirked across his face, belying the distress in his eyes.

"I just need . . . to think a bit." 

"Sure." Duncan nodded, and followed Annie up the steps to the lighthouse.

The water washed to and fro, splashing up occasionally to shower droplets around his feet. He sighed, and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to straighten it all out.

His eyes strayed to the stolen katana beside him. He'd done it. He'd taken on an Immortal and won.

He turned the thought around in his head, prodding it gently. Why didn't he feel pleased? He'd come here half expecting to die. More than half, if he were honest. He shivered slightly, all the bravado which had driven him to the lighthouse and through the fight long gone.

"I must be insane," he muttered, and ran a finger down the edge of the blade. The burning sting and the dark blood seemed to belong to someone else, and then it came again, the flicker of blue, and the cut vanished.

"Shit." He shook his head. "I still don't believe it. I _never_ get the good stuff happening to me." He went back to staring at the sea. "Mac was the one who was going to live forever. I was supposed to grow old - if I was lucky. Instead I get this."

"Why me?" he yelled suddenly. "You bastards, why me? Didn't I have enough grief already, you give me this crap as well?"

He subsided again, and glanced around in embarrassment at his outburst, but there was only him and the seagulls. He didn't see, couldn't sense MacLeod standing hidden in the shadows of the lighthouse. Annie had gone, with a whisper of a kiss, and an unspoken goodbye. He had barely noticed her go, leaning into the wall to prevent himself from going back to help Richie. The lad had asked to be left alone, and right now he'd give Richie anything, so deep was his relief that he lived. But he couldn't bear to go. Instead he watched the sunlight move on the dark blond hair as Richie argued with himself. Tried to forget how near run a thing it had been, forcing away the sick feeling that had chilled his gut when he saw the missing sword and instantly _knew_ where Richie had gone.

"So close, Tessa," he whispered not really aware that he was speaking out loud. "How am I going to keep him alive?"

<A sword would help,> the old pragmatic thought resurfaced. He still hadn't done it. He'd put off training Richie 'till it had almost killed him, and the kid had had to steal a sword from him even then. It was mere luck that he'd known the first Immortal Richie had faced, that he could teach him a trick to replace the weeks - months, of sword play he should have been teaching the new Immortal. He couldn't lie to himself as to why any more either.

<Reality check MacLeod,> he thought dryly, consciously imitating Richie's turn of phrase. <You try to keep him out of the Game and he'll just die anyway the moment your back is turned. All you can do is teach him and let him go his own path. And if he'd died this time it would have been my fault.>

His face clouded and he shrugged the thought away, eyes still fixed on the only family still within his grasp.

"It's not fair," he heard himself whisper. He straightened his back and shook himself at the self-pitying whine. He owed Richie better than this.

A sword then. He mentally reviewed those in his possession. Something fitting. Something _good_. One last glance at the young Immortal motionless on the cliff edge, and he turned and left. 

<We'll work it out. He's a good kid. And he's good, already, in only days.> He smiled with pride and affection: he'd learnt so _fast_. He'd just soaked up the instruction. As he sat in the car he remembered the flash of shock and delighted pride he'd felt as Richie disarmed him with a move learnt only moments before. Even though he'd walked him through it a couple of times, he had expected this twentieth century child to fumble it, instead he was almost as surprised as Richie when it worked. He grinned, thinking back to the look of apologetic horror on Richie's face as he realised how close to Mac's throat his sword had swung. And the elation in his face as the boy realised he could do it - had done it.

"He'll do," he said firmly, pushing the doubts away, and turned the ignition over. "He didn't kill her when he could have either," he added with some relief. "He'll do."

************

Richie had found some loose shale and was idly flipping it into the water below him, apparently absorbed by the ripples and the sounds.

<I didn't kill her though.>

Plop.

<Maybe I can't kill. Gonna last a real long while in the Game that way.> Another stone, skimmed this time. It bounced once off the water, then vanished without trace. He watched it disappear and pulled a face.

<Just like me. A one hit wonder.> He wrapped a fist around the hilt of his stolen sword, and pulled it comfortingly close.

<God I'm scared,> he finally admitted to himself, hugging his knees a little tighter, the sword shifting precariously near to his thighs. It was an adventure before, a game, like out of the movies, where everyone got up after even the worst disasters, and no one really died. When Mac tried to tell him otherwise he'd listened, but he hadn't heard.

The sun moved a long way across the sky as he sat, thinking.

<What if I never can take a head? Kill someone. Murder them. Slice their head off. Top them. Murder. Murder murder murder.>

He repeated it, over and over to see if it seemed less horrific, more acceptable. More real. Unconsciously he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, feeling the vertebrae, and the little hollows between <...where a sword might pass through easiest...>

"I'm only Richie Ryan. Not a MacLeod, a Highlander. What chance have I got?" He dropped his head to his knees again, pressing his face tightly against them, whispering so that not even the gulls would hear -- "What if I really _can't_ take a head. I don't want to die. I never pretended to be one of the good guys, but I'm not a killer. I'm not. I won't become one. I won't. Oh Tess, why didn't you live? You'd've known what to do."

After a while his shoulders stopped shaking, and he lifted his head to stare blindly at the sea again.

He saw her face again, calm, eyes seeing right through him, accepting her fate as he swung back for the last long sweep that would end his old life. And something had stopped him.

Maybe it had been MacLeod, waiting above them both, his face frozen with a emotion Richie couldn't identify, sword in hand. Something had settled in his heart, knowing that even if he died Mac would take her, revenge him. Then it didn't matter any more. He'd made a choice. Not to kill.

<He slept with her,> he thought suddenly, remembering the way the two elder Immortals had stood against each other, and he was envious that Mac had someone to comfort him, assuming that it must have been from long ago, before Tessa.

<Though where _was_ Mac last night? Not...? > He laughed, shying away from the weight of his earlier thoughts. "What an imagination, Ryan. That's gross. Tessa's barely cold."

He shivered at the memory of just how cold. The chill of his own skin as he woke from death. 

And then his mind skittered to the funeral, where he didn't understand a word of the service, but it didn't matter because he couldn't hear the French priest over the gunshots echoing in his head.

The soft damp earth, a hand full. Thrown onto wood that echoed with his skull. A hollow box. Holding the fragments of his life and MacLeod's heart.

And then later, the shop, the terrible business of organising. Talking to Mac's lawyers when all his guardian would do was sit, and stare at photos and drink, but never get drunk. Never cry. Never talk.

Discovering that Tessa had left almost everything to him. More words - droite du suivre... copyright... trust... Mac was to look after the money till he was older. He didn't like the idea of living off of money from the person he had killed -- <... if he'd moved quicker, if he'd known...> Besides, with Mac around he wouldn't have to worry about the money. It would always be there when he needed it.

<...Killed.> His thoughts jarred to a halt, facing the thing he couldn't stand. _Thou shalt not kill_. He wasn't religious, didn't think any of it had even registered with him as he and Angie and Gary had fooled around in the back of class. But it seemed that it had stuck, sitting at the back of his mind hidden until the moment when he had to choose between life or death - _her_ life or death. He hadn't even thought about it before -  <It's so easy for Mac,> he thought resentfully, not privy to the agony that only Connor and Tessa had ever seen in the younger MacLeod at the choices he had had to make.

<There has to be another way!> He clutched the sword tighter even as he considered throwing it away. <Is it worth it? Is my life worth killing for?> He turned the sword, watching as it caught the light. <Clean. No blood yet,> he thought absently, and his mind flashed back to the automatic as it swung round, hammering bullets into living people, his hands and Annie's equally bloody.

<I fight or I die. That's what it comes down to. Or I can run, like Mac told me to.>

"Ha! Like I'm going to start doing what the old guy tells me at _this_ late stage." He grinned ruefully. "Sooo. The question, Mr Ryan, is do you want to live or die? And do you want to live badly enough to kill?"

<It's survival. I didn't ask for this. It's not my fault.> He frowned, this wasn't the way to find the answers, they were just excuses, running round in frantic little circles. It wasn't enough.

"Well then, you could just stand still till the next guy turns up. He'll be glad to solve your moral dilemma. Me with a moral dilemma! The guys'd be killing themselves," he paused at the unlucky phrase, and hastily added, "So to speak."

"Is it worth it?" he asked himself again. "Is my life worth living?"

He lapsed back into silence. 

  
Later he went home. And a sword later yet, he asked Duncan why. All the why's.

  
He got no real answer at first. But he tried again, and again, until one afternoon Duncan drove them both to the sea shore, far away from the city, and they walked along together, remembering. They walked for hours, mostly in silence, because the words they did say were too important to hide in trivia.

  
"...She didn't have much family you know. They didn't need the money, and you do. It was more than that though." Duncan glanced at his friend, his charge. "When we talked about it she said that she wanted you to have it, because if anything happened to her she'd hate for you to go forgotten, when she loved you like her own." He brushed a hand lightly over Richie's rough blond hair, smiling as the boy ducked away.

"Don't you want it?" Richie asked bluntly, some kilometres on.

"I had _her_. Richie, take it. It's about the only thing either of us can give you. And use it carefully, it'll have to last a long time."

"As if." Richie snorted sceptically.

Duncan paused and looked at his protégé. Saw the lingering fear, and the hopelessness that had almost damped his usual buoyancy.

"You'll be okay. Better than okay. Believe me, we all feel like that sometimes."

"So how do you do it?" Richie asked.

"One day at a time; and by believing in yourself, and by finding friends, and never giving up."

"What if I get it wrong?"

Duncan sighed, trying to understand what Richie wanted to know. "Then you go on. You just have to choose as best you can, each time the choice is offered to you. You'll make mistakes, but you've got time."  <Probably,> he added silently, not mentioning his conviction that the time of the Gathering was close.

  
They talked for miles, about practicalities, about discreet lawyers and inventive accountants, about identities, and loss, and living with the dying.

As darkness fell Richie glanced at his friend, then back at his feet where they gently kicked against the log he was perched on.

Duncan saw the look, and smiled. "What, Richie?"

"I just wanted to say, y'know. Thank you."

Duncan smiled again. "Say that tomorrow when we've finished the morning run." 

Richie groaned, and slid off the log to his feet. "I better stock up on some junk food then. Keep my energy levels up." He grinned teasingly at MacLeod who scowled.

"Always thinking of your stomach."

"I like to think of it as prioritising. Chilli dogs?"

Mac sighed, remembering the last chilli dog, and all that had followed. Then he shook himself back to the present. "Okay. And Richie?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Their eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding.

"Raceya!" and Richie started running.

******************


End file.
